Abby Huntsman, potential new co-host of "The View," has a record of excusing Trump's bigotry

During her time at Fox News, Huntsman has accumulated a record of incendiary conservative commentary.

July 27, 2018 4:27PM (UTC)

On July 23, HuffPost reported that Fox News’ Abby Huntsman, currently a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend, is in talks with ABC to join the network’s daytime talk show The View, a favorite target of right-wing media. In response, a Fox News source told HuffPost that the agency that represents Huntsman “is actually in breach of the contract and is not even in the appropriate time window to shop Abby to another network.”

During her time at Fox News, Huntsman has accumulated a record of incendiary conservative commentary. She has helped shill for Trump, including defending his racist views and repeated lies; pushed racist views and falsehoods of her own; and attacked the media. Here are some of Huntsman’s comments and actions:

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On race:

During a segment in which two Black Fox News contributors were driven to tears by President Donald Trump’s comments that there were “some very fine people” on both sides after the violent 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, Huntsman spent most of the time defending Trump’s statement.

Huntsman falsely claimed that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is unconstitutional.

Shilling for Trump:

Huntsman started a bizarre, false rumor on Twitter that the 2016 presidential campaign of Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker began with chants of “we want Trump.” She later deleted the tweet and apologized.

Huntsman criticized the press in an attempt to defend Trump’s remarks that then-President Barack Obama was a founder of ISIS, and she complained that the media did not attack Clinton or Obama for saying Trump’s rhetoric helps ISIS recruit people. But national security experts have said that Trump’s words actually did help ISIS.

After unprecedented outrage forced Trump to finally condemn the neo-Nazis at the Charlottesville rally, Huntsman complained that the president’s forced statement would “still be criticized” and “still be politicized” instead of being taken at face value.

Huntsman praised White House press secretary Sarah Sanders for handling criticism -- including being denied service at a restaurant -- “with class.” Sanders had used her government Twitter account to call out the restaurant by name, prompting a wave of death threats, many directed at an unrelated business.

Huntsman baselessly reported that “$70 million of taxpayer money was wasted on food-stamp fraud” in 2016; she later apologized for the report.

Huntsman defended Trump's conspiracy theory of rampant voter fraud in the 2016 election by claiming that a North Carolina statewide audit showed that “some irregular voting did occur.” While Huntsman’s claim is true, she failed to mention that the audit concluded that most of these were honest mistakes and that “the state’s elections are sound and virtually fraud-free.”